


041 "secret Santa"

by wheel_pen



Series: Iron Man AU [41]
Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Fish out of Water, My Pepper is different, Pre-Iron Man, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-12
Updated: 2013-04-12
Packaged: 2017-12-08 07:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/758764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s Pepper’s first Christmas, and Tony has given her a special gift: edible underwear! Naturally, she’s eating it. In the elevator with Obadiah and Joanna, on the way to a meeting. Tony literally has a meltdown from amusement. “Barn owls, squealing pigs, ducks—once I started mooing I’d have the whole farm covered.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	041 "secret Santa"

**Author's Note:**

> 1) My Pepper is very different from canon Pepper. Her personality/origin is very different; to separate her from canon Pepper I've given her a new last name and a different hair color.
> 
> 2) The bad words are censored. That's just how I do things.
> 
> 3) Stories are numbered in the order I wrote them, which isn't necessarily the order in which they occur. The timeline is Chapter 2 of story 031 “wet.”
> 
> I wrote this series after the first Iron Man movie came out. It's very AU but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play with these characters.

“But I don’t wanna go to the meeting! Unnnnhhhhh!”

“Quit whining, Tony,” Obadiah ordered. “You’re going to the meeting and that’s the end of it.”

“Fine,” I sighed, getting up from my desk. Obadiah was just lucky I wasn’t _really_ putting my foot down about this ‘work’ stuff he liked to foist upon me. I mean, it was December, after all—who really _worked_ this whole month? Except Santa impersonators, maybe. “But if _I_ have to go, then… Pepper does, too!” At least then I would have something nice to look at.

“Fine,” Obadiah agreed shortly. He didn’t slow his stride however. “Hurry up!”

“Pepper, come on!” I prodded my lovely assistant, who was quickly but not flusteredly gathering up work-type materials to bring on this impromptu field trip.

“ _Now_ , Tony!” Obadiah insisted from the hall. “Let’s not be late.”

“What late?” I asked in a cocky voice, hurrying after him. “I’m the boss! No one can be late unless they arrive _after_ me.” Obadiah rolled his eyes and jammed the elevator button extra hard, clearly not agreeing with my point. “In fact, it would actually be nice of us to wait a few more minutes, thus letting everyone else assemble first. That way _nobody_ would be late!” I smiled brightly. “Wouldn’t that be nice, to be, er, nice? At the holidays?”

Obadiah gave me a hard look. “I’ll try being nicer, if you’ll try being smarter, Tony.”

“We seem to be at an impasse, then,” I observed sadly. The elevator arrived and Obadiah, Joanna, and I entered. “Hey, where’s Pepper?” I asked. “We have to wait—“

“We’re not waiting,” Obadiah snapped. Boy, he was cranky today.

The elevator doors started to close, then popped open again as Pepper sailed through. Obadiah sighed and banged on the ‘door close’ button.

“Nice slide, Pep,” I complimented her, leaning forward.

“Thank you, sir,” she responded politely.

I leaned back, enjoying my view from the back of the elevator. Though I was disappointed my relatively new assistant hadn’t gone the miniskirt route when given the chance, she had still taken my fashion advice to heart—and to other places, which her navy blue skirt was currently suctioned to. Hmm, no visible panty line. Thong, perhaps?

“What exactly are you eating, Pepper?” Obadiah asked suddenly, and I finally looked _up_ to see what had interested him enough to ask. And I recognized it. And I began making some very contorted facial expressions and turning quite red with suppressed laughter.

“My Secret Santa left it for me, Mr. Stane,” Pepper explained, continuing to nibble on the bright red rectangle. It was folded up, you see. “It’s candy, in the shape of underwear.”

I pressed my lips together as tightly as I could, doubling over slightly in an effort to keep quiet. “Oh?” Obadiah croaked out, for once in his life at a loss as to what to say. Pepper sometimes had that effect on people.

“Yes,” she went on. “Yesterday, my Secret Santa gave me candy shaped like Santa Claus, and today she gave me candy shaped like underwear, so I think she’s trying for a theme. Also she gave me a pencil cup that looks like a kitten holding a Christmas stocking.” There was a pause during which Obadiah did not comment. Meanwhile, I scrunched up my face and wrapped my arms around myself, desperately hoping I could somehow hold the laughter inside. Although it felt like it might cause a brain hemorrhage. Joanna, who had been looking at a report and then started looking at Pepper, now began looking at _me_.

“I only gave _one_ gift to my recipient today,” Pepper went on, in a slightly worried tone. “Yet _I_ received two. I hope I haven’t misinterpreted the rules. I’ve never participated in this holiday ritual before.” She chomped another corner off the dwindling nugget, which I imagined had become pretty useless as an item of clothing (however temporary)—not just the loss of structural integrity due to the extra holes, but also the thin sugar film layers had likely become inseparably stuck together. I turned towards the elevator wall and leaned my head against it, seeking support as my knees wobbled.

“The packaging said it was supposed to be cherry-flavored,” Pepper continued blithely. “It’s quite subtle, though. More of a general fruit flavor. I’ll have to ask my Secret Santa where she obtained it, after the unmasking ceremony.”

“Uh-huh,” Obadiah grunted. The elevator stopped on the floor with the conference room and he gestured for Pepper to leave first, then Joanna. Then his hand clamped down on my shoulder and he dragged me out before the doors could close on us. I was pretty much purple, I expected, hunched over, shoulders shaking. He made sure the two women had gone into the conference room, then hissed in his deadliest tone, “Tony! You gave your assistant edible underwear for Christmas?!”

The first sound that came out of my mouth, after so much had been so tightly restrained, was not one that improved my reputation at the company, based on the expressions of people further down the hall who turned towards us rather suddenly. No doubt they were expecting to see Obadiah strangling a small mammal. But he only did that _outside_ of work hours.

“Apparently,” I choked out when I could finally mostly speak, “I actually gave them to her as a snack!” I started laughing, that unfortunate sort of laugh where you can’t get enough air and you sound like you’re hooting like a crazed barn owl.

“Tony, would you shut up?!” Obadiah demanded, to no avail. An intern who ventured too close to us received a glare of death and changed his course. “What the h—l were you thinking?!”

“It’s P-pepper’s first Christmas here,” I stuttered, in between very unmanly squeals. “I wanted to give her a n-nice, w-warm welcome!” I couldn’t hold myself up any longer and collapsed against Obadiah, throwing an arm around one shoulder while I leaked multiple bodily fluids onto the other. And continued squeaking out strange, deformed laughs.

“Well, you’ll be lucky if she doesn’t give you a mean, cold sexual harassment lawsuit in return,” he replied, but the fire had largely died out, possibly due to fear for my sanity. He patted my ribs lightly, which was his version of a comforting hug. A sure sign he thought I was having a nervous breakdown.

I didn’t think we needed to worry about Pepper suing me. After all, _she_ was the one who kept chattering to Obadiah in the elevator. “Maybe _you_ could sue _her_ ,” I chortled. That seemed to be the noise one made when laughing while also choking to death.

“Okay, er, let’s calm down now, Tony,” Obadiah suggested. The slight hint of, possibly, fear in his tone only made the situation funnier to me. “Let’s calm down and go into the meeting.”

I tried, I really did. But then I pictured myself sitting at a long wooden table with a bunch of stuffy middle-aged folk in conservative grey suits while Pepper munched on her cherry-red edible underwear, and I lost it all over again. “I can’t,” I gasped helplessly. “I can’t go in there!” I sniffled loudly—I’d hit the ‘laughed ‘til I cried’ milestone some time ago and was now at the ‘laughed ‘til my nose ran’ stage. Right in the middle of it, actually, along with the left shoulder of Obadiah’s suit.

“Gee, is anything wrong?” asked a mild, concerned voice. That would be Bill Gyer, who had no doubt been sent out by the rest of the Board to see what was holding us up. As one of my father’s oldest friends he was often sent out on missions that required a little more compassion and diplomacy, as opposed to Obadiah’s cunning and ruthlessness.

“Uh, no, Bill, everything’s fine,” Obadiah insisted. I let out a sound like a dying duck. Barn owls, squealing pigs, ducks—once I started mooing I’d have the whole farm covered. “Take a deep breath and hold it,” he instructed me. That was what people had me do when I was a kid and got into laughing or crying fits.

I gave it a try and finally started to calm down. I even detached myself from Obadiah, which he was no doubt thoroughly grateful for. From the looks of his shoulder, however, I was going to need to spend several minutes in the washroom cleaning up before I presented myself in public again.

He and Bill had been chatting aimlessly about mundane things while they waited for me to regain my sanity—the weather, today’s agenda, what kinds of coffee were being served at the meeting. “Oh, that reminds me, Tony,” Bill said, turning to me where I leaned against the wall, almost ready to move. “I was just talking to your assistant. Sounds like the ladies in your office are getting a little risqué with the Secret Santa thing this year. Might want to look into that.”

It was a very long time before the meeting could begin.


End file.
